Stimulate your creativity with art classes

Staff Report
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May 24, 2013 at 12:59 PM

Kingsport artist Patti Lawrence will teach people how to access and improve their creativity in a four-session course at Star Trails Gallery in downtown Kingsport. The classes will be held from 6:30 to 8 p.m., Thursdays in June. The cost for all four classes is $100.

“People often ask me how I come up with so many ideas so quickly and easily,” said Lawrence. “Everyone has the ability to be more creative, they just have to learn how to exercise certain parts of the brain that are not usually called upon in everyday life.”

The course is designed to help people achieve more creative problem-solving abilities by thinking differently and using alternative neural impulses than they’ve been programmed to use.

Although the exercises and assignments will have fun and unique visual outcomes, the class is not solely geared for artists. “This class will help the underutilized connectors in the brain to become more active, more easily stimulated and more flexible, making it easier for participants to come up with clever solutions they might not have discovered otherwise,” Lawrence said.

Once flexed and strengthened, these creative brain “muscles” will benefit artists, writers, businessmen, inventors, scientists and anyone who would like to find more creative solutions to problems.

Lawrence earned a bachelor of fine arts degree from the School of Visual Arts in New York and holds a master of arts in teaching degree.

Those 16 and older pre-register at Star Trails Downtown on Broad Street, located next to Blakely Mitchell. Space is limited, so pre-registration is recommended.